This scene rewards having three things on, and I want the opposite

A small scene quietly rewards the man with three things on at once. He is at everything, he is visible, there is always something happening around him. I have watched that work for a decade and I want the other thing entirely, and I am aware that saying so makes me sound either principled or slow.

Thirty three, the city centre, nine years in. Two partnerships, one of four years and one of two, no overlap between them, and long dull stretches in between that I did not mind at all. That pattern is not a strategy or a position. It is simply what I like.

One person, across a long stretch, is the whole of what I want. Not exclusivity imposed on anybody as a rule, just the honest shape of how I work: my attention does not divide well, and the twice I have tried, both people got a worse version of me and both of them noticed before I did.

I am not judging anybody who runs their life the other way. Some of the people I like most in this city have four things going and everybody involved appears to be happy about it. It is simply not available to me, and I no longer pretend otherwise simply to look relaxed at parties.

So: one partner, an evening or two a week, over years, and eventually somebody whose ordinary week I know in detail. If you want to be one of several, we would both end up disappointed, and I would rather that were clear now than in month five.